THE NEVER ENDING ALPHABET
A Pilot Project Using Roy Heath's Typology of X, Y,
z,
ani ABy Justine Harris
Three different interview styles may be readily recognizable to counsellors: the bland, friendly, "one-or-two worder;1f the coherent Ifprepared-statement-man; If and the impulsive "plunger" whose conver satil>n zips fran topic to topic without apparent connection. These are interview styles of the personality types presented:in Roy Heath's
warm,
often amusing, and stimulating book The Reasonable Adventurer, (Heath,1964)
a study of young men at college. Although relentless cate,~orizing can leadto
abominations af indiscriminate pigeonholing, such a typology as Heatht s can be a refreshing stimulant, if taken in moderation, to many aspects of personnel work.HeathtJ }roject involved working closely with about
30
students throughout their four-year stay at Princeton University. He was both a researcher and their faculty advisor. Partway through their i'reshman year, Heath, in reflecting on the many interviews he had had with th/3m in the fall, discovered that he was thinking in terms of inter view styles - he differentiated three: the "non-eommitters,"whom he called Xs; the "hustlers, If whom. he called Ys; and the "plungers,"
whom he called Zs. Among a small number of these he detected, in addition to their underlying X-ness, Y-ness, or Z-ness, an unusual reflectiveness, maturity, and autonomy. The few men who showed these traits he called "reasonable adventurers, rt and in a model of his
tyPology he showed them as high on an
"A"
dimension.It was Heatht s view that the X led an inner life of fantasy in
which he dreamed he could accomplish a great deal if he ever tried. INFOOMATION ON AUTHm.:
Justine Harris, Graduate Studies, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia.
But the X didn't ordinarily test this myth, for fear it was not true,
and so he seldom became coDJIlitted to serious learning. Heath folU'd that Is accanplished most
or
their positive deve10puent in conditions of moderate challenge, and that "growth in X is a matter of reuniting the inner-self of fantasy with the outer-self of world interacticn". Sometimes, he says, the humanities act as a stimulation to this "Art, music, and certain kinds of literature seem to arouse the deeper wishes, unfulfilled human strivings •••• " (Heath, 1964, pp. 59-60)Heath found the development of the Y quite a different matter. The Y is attempting to control his impulses by erecting a 'tiefensive super-structure or pseudose1f to protect himself." As long as this works, he will probably continue using it llithout serious consider ation of more relevant attairnnents. Heath concluded, fran the evidence of his observation of Ys, that lithe reconstruction of a Y•• requires a calamity", or that, through "sustained exposure to love and aff ection", the super-structure may ''melt''. (Heath,
1964,
pp.63-64)
The Z, a person with strong swings of mood, is al so a strong individualist and. needs a tolerant climate in which to grow. But the climate should also be one in which structure and coherence are provided, so that "the poorly intergrated threads of the inner-self" may be provided with a framework. (Heath, 1964, p.
69)
In an attempt to explore Heath's typology among undergraduates at the University of British Columbia, the present writer conducted an informal investigation of persons who had reached the third year of t~aining in the College of Education. The general aim was to see whether Heath's notions have pertinence for the school system in
British Columbia. The research was preliminary and exploratory; no generalizations were drawn from the data. From the process, however, it was concluded that Heath's typology is suggestive of ways to look at both learning problems and class
and
school climates.Heath~ long-term study could not be replicated in the available
time, so a drastic shortcut for categorizing subjects as X, Y, Z, or
A was devised. A Q-sort composed of adjectives from Heath's book was administered and the results recorded for
53
subjects in a third-year psychology course. The adjectives were descriptive of X, Y, and Ztypes in equal numbers. Subjects sorted them into piles like them, unlike them, and "1n-betwee~" md then these choices were forced :itt.o a 2-3-5-13-5-3-2 distribution. The ten ''like"
am
"unlike" adjective choices were recorded, and were numerically weighted for degree of likenessarid
unlikeness, with positive values for those like, and negative for those unlike. A SUbject might choose adjectives which would sum into, for instance, plus 5 X, plus 1 Y,am
minus4
z
an X with sane Y characteristics.After the subject completed this. section of the Q-sort he re shuffled his ten "most like" choices with 15 more slips on which were adjectives used by Heath to describe the reasonable adventurer, or A. From these 25 adjectives the subject then choose ten adject i ves most like him, having been told that he could amend his original choices. Again, his choices were recorded
and
weighted numerically, yielding a score on the "A-scale" comparative to others in the group.Results showed
14
Xs, 25 Ys, and 13 Zs, with A-scores ranging from3
to 17, with a mean of9.4. .
A rough validation of the instrtnnent was established by compar ing scores on X, Y, and Z with hypotheses proviously made by the re searcher on 22 individuals known to her. They completed the Q-sort previous to its experimental run. Twenty persons were found on the hypothesized dimensions. A brief set of reliability tests '~re run on this group: ten subjects retested after two to three weeks were all on the same dimension as in the original administratian,regard less of their using many different adjectives tre second time. An
unexpected and rather comical validation of a different sort turned up when nine students in the experimental group forgot the number which identified their results, and had to make a special trip to another building to check their hand~~itten records. These less organized individuals included four "complacent" Xs, four Iterraticlt
Zs, and only one ''reliable'' Y, although Ys, as has been shown, out numbered the others.
Validation of A scores was much less satisfactory than even the foregoing hanespun procedures: only in subsequent interviews with some of the subjects did t..h9 writer feel3'e had some clues m degrees
of reasonable adventuring, and such interviews were too few to allow even a guess to be made as to whether the A-scale was measuring A
ness. \mat clues there were seemed to operate in the direction of validation, but this part of the procedure is in particular need of further study.
To relate Heath's dimensions and his theorizing about how the different types learn to the experiment's results, certain selected individuals were interviewed to see what thefr school mxi university experiences had been. A few excerpts from interview notes will illustrate some of the findings:
ttRoxane, U an X with a very high A score: X-like, Roxana had
ttalways been quiet,"
am
reluctant to speak up in class. Intellect ually she was very capable, so that challenges always did appear "moderatert to her. In high school she especially enjoyed Englishand found delight in ,mting and in art,
at
which she was also gifted. She is now training to be an art teacher. Despite some unhappiness because of an outstandingly strict family, Roxane's .natural endowments appear to have been augmented by a school climate favorable to the growt.h of an I, to the point where she nOli says, "Just learning just makes me happy. ttnConstance, naY who scored near the mean on A, has al\\rays been a leader and until this year has drifted along with family expect ations, school expectations, and general know-how. But she appears to· be undergoing h:r first crisis-one of deep worry about her chances of using her progressive ideas about teaching if and when she does teach. She fears an in..lrl.biting climate, because she deplores the tradition-bound nature of her own high school and those she has ob served during her training. It seems that she has come up against something she feels she may not be able to organize, and despite her academic and social success she is working her way through what Heath may have had in mind when he spoke of ttcalamity.1f She re ported that for the first time she is seriously considering her aims
and
abilities.UEd, n a Z high on the A scale, was something of a surprise: on a questionnaire te wrote very little, and reported that hi.s teaching
major was science. The writer was not prepared for a laconic scientist in the category. The interview. however, quickly cleared
up this anomaly. &t had the ~ike oral fluency, and cheerfully -apped ~hrough a wide variety of topics. He wants to teach because of liking ;y'oung people, . really doesn't care what he teaches, and T~j~:~d in science more through accident than design. He has the ~_!!';ight to see that i t may have been a happy accident because it has a natural structure that he lacks. He thought that his wann but finn family had kept him headed in the right direction, and all but wrote off the influence of his "rule-b9und" school, as having been a necessary e-vil - one which he, in contrast to Constance, thinks he Iirl.ght change.
"Clark," an artistic Z, who was low on A, is in direct contrast to the Z-ness of Ed. Clark has remained impulsive and disorganized, is in danger of failing, has started many vocational projects, is in rebellion and thoroughly troubled about himself. He seems never to have found the frame\-rork for his energies - school was too easy for him and unlike Roxane he didn't enjoy the m.i.ldness of its challenges. From these retrospective glimpses of student life, on9 can see that use of Heath's categories could suggest how different kinds of educational experience~ might help the different personality types.
Although i t would 00 ridiculous to imagine that measurement a1 Reatl1s dimensions could be used to plan specific training programs, there does seem to be a potential value in the typology in that it might increase awareness of personality characteristics--an awareness that could be used in planning educational experiences by teachers, students, and counselors alike.
Heath, Roy, The Reasonable Adventurer: Pittsburg, University of Pittsburg Press.